Etiquette 101: Contributing when other person is paying?

A reader who’s in her late 50s writes the following, about social dining among friends, not dating scenarios:

When I was growing up, I always understood that if someone said, ‘Let’s go out to dinner. My treat,’ there were a few unspoken but understood rules, namely, 1) Order the chicken or something not too expensive, and 2) Offer or even insist on picking up the tip. That seems to to have changed. Over the years I’ve noticed that fewer and fewer people even make an effort to reach for their wallet when the check comes. Sometimes I ask the server immediately afterward and find that they left nothing additional on the table, and I have to scramble to cover it. Will you ask your readers if they’ve experienced this change?

If I offer to take someone to dinner, either as a thank-you, an expression of friendship or because I know the other person would enjoy a night out and is financially strapped, I don’t expect him or her to contribute anything and wouldn’t be indignant if an offer wasn’t made. It seems to me that if you don’t want to pay the whole cost of the evening, you shouldn’t say you will. However, if the person asks to give me a token amount of cash or to pick up the tip, I’m not going to say no.

But I can’t say I’ve noticed a difference between guests today offering to pay the tip versus how often such a gesture was made in decades past.

25 Responses

if i invite someone out to dinner and say its my treat, all i expect at the end is a thank you. actually no, i wouldn’t even expect a thank you. if i’m inviting someone out then i want to spend time with him or her so the evening with my friend/husband/whoever is thanks enough. why would i say it’s my treat if i did not actually mean it’s my treat?

I understand the reader’s point and was raised with those guidelines as well, however on the other side, I would never offer to pay for dinner then expect the other person to pay the tip; it’s either a treat or it’s not.

I also agree with the ordering chicken; although I usually wait to see what the person paying is ordering and order something the same price or less.

The only times I’m ever “take out” to dinner is by my mom or dad. Each time, they pay for my meal and the tip and I don’t feel that I need to contribute either. I also order the steak… There are times when I take either of them out to dinner. They will offer to pay the tip and I don’t let them.

Being of the male gender and dating, I am often paying for dinner and the tip. This is cool with me and when a date asks to pay for the tip, I tell her that I’ve got it covered, but she can definitely take me out to dinner sometime and return the favor.

On the rare occasion that I “treat” friends to a meal, it’s a spur of the moment sort of thing. In my age group, it’s less “let’s go out and have a meal” and more “We’re hanging out and some of us are hungry,” so there aren’t really formal invites to dinner with the expectation that someone is “treating” the others. So, I just grab the check when it comes and tell everyone that I’ve got it covered for whatever reason (it’s a holiday, I got a raise, whatever). I’ll let friends take care of the tip if they ask or I’ll do the “you can take me out sometime” thing.

I rarely eat dessert at restaurants, so I generally tell the other person they can buy me a milk shake or ice cream later on if they insist on paying something. If we’re going out afterwards, they can also buy me a beer.

But I’ve had similar experiences to the reader where someone else is paying for a business dinner and I always reach for my wallet and at least offer to pay something, even though I know the offer will be rebuffed. My other colleagues just sit there.

I think this is an odd question. If you invite someone out and say you’re treating, then you are treating. If they offer up some money, that’s nice of them, and you can choose whether or not to let them contribute. I don’t think it’s an etiquette faux pas however if they don’t.

I’d love to chime in. I often take my staff out to dinner, whether it’s after an event or just to go out and I always pick up their tab. They pay for nothing. Why? They work hard for us, it’s a no-brainer.

If I’m going to invite people out, ie: other friends or business clients and I say “Let’s do dinner, my treat”…It’s totally MY treat, tip included.

I’m actually insulted if they only order “a salad”. I say to them prior, if I have too, please feel free to order openly and enjoy.

I certainly don’t expect a guest to pay anything if I invite them as my guest. In fact, I have occasionally had guests insist (in a more than perfunctory way) on getting the tip, and I find that baffling and a bit unpleasant. I don’t expect my guests to buy the cheapest thing on the menu, but I would expect them to keep their order generally in line with the rest of us. I am fairly young, so it’s possible times have changed, but my understanding of etiquette is that the “pay-back” for being someone’s guest is to offer host them in the future (in some way that is comfortable for you and within your means.) I do think it is polite to offer to pay if the guest/host relationship has not been made explicitly clear.

Order as you would if you were sharing the cost. Your host should be familiar with your dining habits.

On a related subject… You go to dinner with others, some of whom order alcohol and others do not. Do you offer to split the bar tab only among the drinkers? Seriously, when you consider the exorbitant cost of alcoholic beverages in some establishments my personal belief is the teetotalers should not be picking up the extra expense. Opinions?

Group dinners can be problematic for the bar tab issue as well as inequality in what folks order, when the decision is made to split the bill equally. I’ve been out on a number of occasions in groups where some people have several top shelf drinks, an app, and the most expensive entree. Meanwhile, my SO and I might be satisfied with a dinner salad or a burger, and my SO doesn’t drink. When the bill arrives, all of a sudden we are splitting the bill equally (to save the server work… ahem). I just don’t accept those invitations anymore. It is clear that the big spenders know what they are doing- asking the rest of us to subsidize their lifestyles. I’m not interested in doing that. I’m perfectly happy having dinner with just the SO and then maybe meeting everyone else later on someplace else for ice cream or coffee.

I never understood why some people like to split the bill evenly, without regard to who ordered what. If everyone pays for and tips for what they ordered, then the bill ends up being split fairly. It’s not difficult to figure out the totals, especially with calculators built into every cell phone. Even if a calculator isn’t available, there its no good reason not to be able to work it out on the back of the bill.

If I order an app and 3 drinks with my meal, I don’t expect someone else to cover any of it, and vice versa.

Sounds like we are either responding too literally or are in a different age group (ha ha).

What the reader is referencing is not just etiquette or expectations, but the cultural dance that we no longer do. It was the dining room cha cha! some of the other moves: the pause when the check arrives, the “we should go dutch” parry, the feigning to reach for the wallet, the offer for a tip (politely or profusely refused), the “you shouldn’t haves” (when clearly they “owed” you dinner—at LEAST!)and the parting “we ought to do this again sometime”

I agree with #12… I was raised to make the offer and to do that “dance” and grab for my wallet, HOWEVER I completely agree with everyone else. If I offer to treat, I’m in 100%. It would be disingenuous of me to offer and then expect them to tip. I think what made me so adamantly opposed to the reader’s comment was the word “scrambled.” You need to expect that you are paying the tip if you’ve offered to treat. The expectation that the other person will leave the tip is not one I would ever make unless they actually said that when the bill came.
On the other hand, if I invite someone over for dinner, I usually do expect they are going to bring a bottle of wine or a dessert. If they don’t, no big deal, but I do expect it. I might actually say, “we have wine and hard liquor, if you want beer bring it, but you’re welcome to whatever we have,” if I want them to bring a certain thing.
I wouldn’t expect them to tip though. I certainly wouldn’t be offended if they didn’t offer. Unless they were rolling in cash haaaaa.

I agree that if I invite someone to a meal as my guest, or explicitly as “my treat,” then I expect to cover the entirety of the meal, including tip. I would also expect my guest to order normally — if they wouldn’t typically order surf & turf with caviar and gold dust on the side, I’d be annoyed if they did just because I was paying. But otherwise, don’t have the chicken just because it’s the cheapest option.

Spur of the moment decisions by me to cover the bill are slighly different, I’d say. In those situations, if someone else offers to cover the tip, I’d probably accept that offer. But I think it’s all in how the dinner invitation is framed.

I think many people are getting the issue backwards. I think the writer was not trying to say that people who offer to pay should always expect the invitee to pay the tip and be insulted if they don’t–not at all. Of course the host should expect to pick up all costs. What the writer was saying is that, as the invitee, people were raised to be polite, and if they were invited out it is polite to at least offer to pay the tip, as a gesture of thanks for being treated to such a generous meal. Its not expected by the host, its more of what’s in the mind of the invitee who is polite and who would offer as a polite and generous thing to do. I also don’t see much of that happening anymore. Its more of an “its all for one” mentality, not a “let’s both show we are generous people” mentality. We should all be not just takers, but givers as well. And far too many people say “I’ll get the check next time” and NEVER do.

I think this quote: “Sometimes I ask the server immediately afterward and find that they left nothing additional on the table, and I have to scramble to cover it” certainly seems to imply that s/he expects the guest to pay the tip and is not prepared for them not to do so.

Now, accepting the hospitality of others and never reciprocating is always bad etiquette. But paying the tip just seems weird to me – imagine if I gave someone a nice gift and they said, “Oh, thanks – here, let me just give you $20 to cover part of the cost.” Crazy! As a guest, be appreciative; and make an effort to take a turn as host. We have some friends who would find it a stretch financially even to pay the tip on some of the dinners we’ve hosted, but they always manage to reciprocate in other ways and we never feel they are taking advantage.

When I pick up a tab, which I do way too often, I find that those who say, “Thanks so much, I’ll get it the next time,” are folks with whom I enjoy a friendship or business relationship that is built on reciprocity. Those who insist on throwing money at me when the check comes, conversely, seem to be worried that either they can’t afford to pick up my tab next time, or plan not to dine with me again in the future. Oh well.

The area in which I’ve faced real issues with the tab has been in a group situation. The check comes, everyone does some sort of rudimentary calculation for what they believe owe, everything becomes awkward, someone heads to the bathroom, and I end up paying the lion’s share. I’ve tried to avoid this by pretending I don’t notice the check arrived, but this is my personal plea to area restaurants: when serving a group, simply asking how the individual ordering would like his or her check, or finding some other creative and discreet way of separating out the couples from the singles actually BRINGS groups back to your restaurant.

I’m going to put a plug out there for Epicurean, whose staff is never inconvenienced by having to deliver a dozen checks to a big group of people, they do so with pleasure. How much more work does that entail? I’m not sure, but let’s just say we bring big groups to Epicurean time and time again, and not so much to many other area hot spots for precisely that reason.

Also, the older I get, the more mooches I seem to meet, and restaurants could help me with that if they choose.

Tip to the Tormented Treater: when arranging for a group or treating others to a meal, call the restaurant in advance and alert them as to how you would like the check handled.

I always offer to help with the bill if I’m treated out, even if I know it will be rejected. If I offer to treat someone I do not expect them to make the same offer and I’m not offended if they don’t. That said, if I treat someone and they order an item that is an outlier cost wise, I will be annoyed. If I’m the invitee, I try my best to make sure I order something less expensive then the treater is ordering themselves.